Puerto Madero, Chiapas, Mexico

On Monday, December 30, Eric was feeling antsy to get out of the marina. The other cruisers had told us the public transit for the area were mini-vans called Collectivos that followed a route. The route had no set stops or scheduled times; people just waited for it somewhere along the route and waved it down when they saw it. And apparently you indicated when you wanted it to stop to let you off. We were told that the Collectivos can get quite crowded. 

Eric wasn’t thrilled about trying the collectivo on a holiday week, so he called a taxi to take him to the airport (about a 15-minute drive) and rented a car. He went back to the marina to pick up Christi and Eric and they set out to do some exploring. 

From the marina, we followed the main highway north for a few miles. The building belching smoke was indeed the closest one to the marina. We later found out it was an instant-coffee factory.  We passed several industrial looking compounds, including an area that had big fuel storage tanks and an area under construction. We later found out they were building a train line.  

We turned west onto the cross-road that led into Puerto Madero and followed it to the ocean. From what we could see, Puerto Madero was a typical small Mexican town.

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The Jungle of Marina Chiapas

Saturday, December 28 – This morning Christi went out to scrub the bird poop shortly after sunrise, wanting to get it done before it was too hot out. She was horrified to see that the entire boat was covered with a strange ash. We’d noticed yesterday that directly north of us, possibly the next building over, there had been a steady stream of smoke. Apparently, it burned all night. We also found that more birds had come along and added to the collection. The newly deposited gifts were red in color. While they washed off easily, we were going to need to treat the spots with special cleaner to completely remove the discoloration. The baked-on older gifts took a fair amount of scrubbing to remove.  

Yesterday, Keith had wanted to order chilaquiles, but the restaurant was only serving lunch. This morning, Keith requested that we go back to the restaurant for breakfast today so he could get chilaquiles. 

There was no salsa service at breakfast. Instead, they brought out a slice of banana bread for each of us. Eric ordered what is a traditional breakfast food for this region: chicken tacos with the local mole sauce, which was served with rice and fried plantains. Mole is a savory sauce made with chocolate and chilis. Every region in Mexico has its own special spin on ingredients are used in the sauce, so there are many kinds of moles across Mexico. The menu indicated that this one was mildly spicy and had nuts. This mole was dark brown. The sauce was complex; Eric could identify peanuts and cinnamon, but he couldn’t figure out the other ingredients 

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Welcome to Puerto Chiapas, Chiapas, Mexico

Friday December 27 — Continued from yesterday… At 0940, we turned into the channel into Puerto Chiapas/Puerto Madero. 

If our understanding is correct, Puerto Chiapas is the south side of the channel, which has a large navy base and the marina. Puerto Madero is the north side of the channel, which has a small fishing village. This is a photo of Puerto Madero taken from the main channel.

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Barra de Navidad and Colimilla

Sunrise on Thursday, December 19

Reports were that, while the water here at the marina was clean, the salinity could vary, so sometimes it wasn’t drinkable. This morning, Eric tested the water and was excited that the salinity was low enough to fill the tanks. As he was setting up the water pre-filter, he shouted to Christi and Keith to stop doing school work and to come outside. We saw the famous French Baker boat was in the marina. We flagged them down, and they came over to our boat so we could buy pastries. The pastries were delicious. We could get used to fresh pastries delivered to our door every morning.

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